The Line of Totality
Day Twenty-Nine of Thirty Days of Writing

The total solar eclipse of 2017 came and went as most things: beautiful for a moment, a lovely celestial pause, then wreckage, withdrawal, escape, leaving, abandonment… and I was left to pick up the pieces as the children sauntered back to their classrooms. Think debris left behind following a violent storm that had annihilated a home and scattered belongings for miles. Think, simply, a tree that stands for a century and gravity, relentlessly leaning her heavy shoulder for so long, while circuitous life hollows out his insides, finally submits and falls to the earth, shattering. The splinters sprawl out from the center like an impact crater, like a man who had fallen from a ten-story building, like a heavy glob of paint dropped upon a canvas. A metaphor within a metaphor is a poor form poet.
It was beautiful though, the moon slowly engulfing the sun.
Day groaned into an afternoon twilight.
The welding lenses like a blindfold before an execution or a magic trick. I see nothing until the sun, a pulsing green orb.
There was much anticipation — expectation. My plan was to head south, to gather the full amount of total coverage, however, I made a mistake in my schedule. So instead of being where I wanted, maybe with someone I cared to be with, I was in Saint Charles, north north north. Totality was brief, thirty seconds at most, and not even full totality, there was beacon shining on top of the eclipsed sun, a light that snuck through. Was this the way it was intended? I suppose I am picky. Be where you are. I was happy waiting for an epiphany. This-THIS marks a new beginning, I am certain, I was, it must, not just for me but for the whole planet.
I asked some of my students to write about the eclipse. I had been wondering what a total eclipse might have meant to peoples of the past — to people today. I know what it means to me: that I don’t know what it means, but I want it to be a signal to change. A kind of hour striking on a celestial clock; an alarm that keeps ringing until we wake up.
The answers were consistent, leaning one way or the other. The positive response, “the chance of a lifetime”, was to take advantage of this one time in life to spectate the spectacle of heavenly drama, to watch our sun and moon dance in a kind of play. A Comedy.
Even characters in the atmosphere and on land took part. A fat cloud, the only cloud in the sky, moved into position between us and the spectacle; an eclipse of an eclipse, hah! A roar and many curses rose up from the audience of students, and then a cheer when the cloud floated somberly away, a poor defeated villain. Insects acted the part of the orchestra, creating an atmosphere of anxiety and anticipation as their instruments intensified at the dimming light. Evening birds opened their sleepy eyes and sang odd solos for the darkened midday. It was a composition, not a calamity.
The other response was a kind of indifference, as well as a rebuke of all the hype surrounding the eclipse. This side saw no real value nor any personal stake in the event to take place. It may be interesting but so what? It will happen again and again. It will have no impact on my life and so why should I care?
I had forgotten this side because I was one of those interested in experiencing the eclipse — I was seeking meaning. I was believing the climax would yield some sort of response to all my hoping. I didn’t really care what anyone else felt for it, though I did try and pique people’s interest. Why? I guess it seems significant to me. A bizarre cloud pattern seems significant to me, or the way oil weaves itself in a pan, even the sporadic path an ant walks on paper seems like some sort of secret message I must decipher.
There is no hidden meaning, naturally, only the meaning to me, that I give to these experiences, to the actions of other beings. I guess it doesn’t really matter if you were overly excited or utterly indifferent, that was always up to you.
…
Inch by foot by mile
Miles and miles and
Miles like millimeters
I am like a millimeter
Watching a mammoth blot out
The sun…is it lighter yet — am I
…
Maybe this Moon & Sun dance is the day you change forever, the day you take charge of your life for you, and not to impress anyone but yourself and be proud for the things you do
…
What happens after its buried?
Well, son, that’s when you can look directly at the silhouette of the sun with your naked eyes, otherwise your corneas will be scorched and retinal damage ensues and a variety of sight conditions follow.
Have any of you ever see an eclipse before?
(silence)
I did once, when I was a child. I suffered from migraine headaches. I am now blind in one eye.
The last eclipse in Michigan was 1979, is that right?
I receive varying degrees of miscalculated minsinformation, disorganized diagnostical details, anyways I’m sure it says it somewhere… but if that’s so perhaps it was something else. I often would stare into the sun until it turned blue. Heaven — Earth — Underworld; Land of the ten-thousand things; yin, yang, masculine, feminine — it’s all right above my head.
Will I be able to see you when the dark comes? I’m afraid of the dark.
Yes, son, and even if you cannot it is only dark briefly, thirty seconds here, two minutes for your mother in the crucible of the south. The choir of evening crickets will chirp and the dusky dark nightingales will sing their heads off. All you must do is see with your ears and hands and know that there is nothing to fear.
…
The contrast is less
The stark shadows bleed
Into one single shade
Twilight in the afternoon
Phones raised, camera eyes shielded
By welding lenses…pics on a Monday
An event we can’t comprehend…is that so?
It’s simple enough is it not?
Eerie the cheers and cacophony beholden
Did pause by darker darker darker a
Crash like thunder darker darker darker
Creatures spinning wild the cheers and
Screams darker darker darker
the Shade as it nears totality
until finally
the last sliver
becomes a point
a pin and
black nothing.
I remove my glasses
To see with
Naked eyes…
…

…
It’s brief — 30 seconds maybe. I don’t want to look away, I want it to linger always. A ray slices out, steals my eye, it stings, it got me, maybe I wanted it to all day, all along.
The moon recedes faster than it came
still thee hand executioner-
everyone over, everyone moves
on with their lives.
